heart failure
by eientoaki
Summary: It pumps and pumps until stress builds up, so much so that it cannot pump anymore. You can do all that you can, with all of your might but you will have to learn that, in the end, you cannot force a tired heart.


**heart failure**

_It pumps and pumps until stress builds up, so much so that it cannot pump anymore. You can do all that you can, with all of your might but you will have to learn that, in the end, you cannot force a tired heart._

* * *

"Lacus?"

The young man tentatively spoke to the nothingness that filled the dark room. The silence was so fragile yet so dense. It could be broken by the demise of a raindrop disappearing on a window pane, yet could not be penetrated by the wail of a siren. A sense of worry crept over him. This was not how it should be. This kind of emptiness, of loneliness, was something he could accept anywhere else. But not here. Not this room, no. The people who lived here were too happy for that - too blessed. He stepped forward further into the darkness, venturing another call:

"Lacus…? Are you in here? Answer me!"

Something on the floor resisted his cautious steps. He looked down to see that the floor was covered with various objects - articles of clothing, pieces of paper, and the like. As his eyes strained to see further into the room, a photograph on the floor caught his eye. It was a photograph of two boys dressed smartly in uniforms. He picked it up.

_This was from before the war_, Athrun muttered to himself.

There they were, smiles gracing their hopeful faces. He recognized his younger self, still full of dreams and the confidence to achieve them. Not a single doubt snaking its way into his eyes. Then there was his friend, Kira, looking a bit shy but with joy clearly permeating his features. There was light in his eyes, something that Athrun thought could never be extinguished. Now, Athrun realized, Kira's smile doesn't reach his eyes like they used to. Back then, he had reassured Kira that war would not break out between the coordinators and the naturals, but he had been wrong. And Athrun had lived that moment in his mind more times than he would care to admit, cursing his own certainty - his naivete. He had been young - they were both no more than boys, but a part of him believed that had he not led Kira to believe as strongly as he had in his absurd fantasy of stability, things might have been different. It would all have hurt so much less. Maybe.

In the quiet, Athrun wished that things could have stayed the way they were in the photograph. He allowed himself to yearn for those times for but a moment, before he gathered those feelings up and threw them into a deep, deep well. Suddenly, something moved in his peripheral vision, and he pivoted his head towards the movement.

A dark curtain swaying lightly against the window let the moonlight in in dancing slivers. The light fell upon a crumpled, immobile figure in the corner of the room. Her flaxen hair was in disarray, strewn across her shadowed face. Athrun approached with urgency.

"Lacus! Hey, Lacus. Are you okay?"

The figure stirred slowly, bringing a hand up to brush stray strands of hair away from her face. Her pale blue eyes swept across the room slowly, almost lethargically, before they finally fell upon Athrun and his furrowed brow. "Hello, Athrun," Lacus said in a raspy voice. They stared at each other for a moment, Lacus like someone who had just woken up from a deep slumber and Athrun like a mother trying to give a sick child a piece of her mind. Finally, Lacus broke the silence.

"What is it?" She raised a finger to the area between his eyebrows, pressing it lightly. "You're going to get wrinkles if you keeping doing that," she continued. Athrun recoiled, embarrassed for no reason he could think of.

"Athrun, why are you here?" she asked.

"I'd like to ask you the same thing. This place is a mess. What happened?" Athrun asked as he looked around the room. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and only now could he fully appreciate the carnage around them. Then, something struck him. Someone was missing from this scene.

"Lacus, where is Kira?" he asked gravely.

"Kira…" Lacus trailed off into silence, her head dropping close to her chest.

"Where is he?" Athrun's voice had risen imperceptibly. His hand was on her shoulder, applying a reassuring pressure.

Lacus looked up and Athrun thought he saw a pained face, but in the next moment, she was smiling. The smile that Athrun had loved.

"He left," she said simply.

"He left? What do you mean he left?" Athrun knew what she meant, but felt the need to argue against something he thought was, until then, impossible.

"I wish… I wish I could tell you he left for groceries," Lacus spoke with a voice that was slowly getting higher. Her voice was like a sheet of winter ice through which something was desperately trying to break. It was all but banging against the ice, but all you could hear were soft, muted thuds. _Help me_, it said - the thing under the ice.

"... Or that he's just late coming home, but… But," Quietly, uneventfully, the ice had begun to crack.

"He's gone, Athrun. And he'll never come back." she said simply. The crack spread beautifully across the vast expanse of the ice, like the veins on the hands of a painter. The ice broke and the creature from beneath it took a breath, and screamed with a horrid howl. It was full of anguish and love and hatred… But mostly, pain.

"What?" Athrun was in disbelief. It was a disbelief one displayed when one had been proven utterly wrong about something believed to be an immutable truth. Lacus' tears were falling onto the floor, and her shoulders shook violently as she took ragged breaths. He wanted to ask her why - why Kira had left. But, he already knew. It was something he blinded himself to, to preserve whatever happiness was left. If there was any happiness left after the war...

"I begged him, Athrun. I begged him not to leave me! I prayed that he wouldn't. But he said we were going nowhere. He said that he couldn't forget... _Her_." There was no edge in Lacus' voice now. She had lost the energy to worry, or to be hateful. It was only painful to keep recalling those last moments, which she wished, at the very least, could have been fond ones.

"What kind of future does that man expect from someone six feet under? Stand up, Lacus. At least sleep on your bed," Athrun urged her to get up. He knew how Kira was never able to forget about that _woman_ - neither would he or Lacus. But he also thought that it was selfish of Kira to have done such a thing, to leave someone who genuinely loved you, for someone who wasn't here anymore.

"I'll find Kira. I'll talk to him. Someone's gotta knock some sense into that idiot. Rest here and wait for me." Athrun turned to walk towards the door, but before he was out of reach, Lacus grabbed at his sleeve.

"Athrun, don't. I'm all right. It doesn't matter," she said, wiping the tears from her face gingerly.

Athrun was suddenly outraged. "No, it's not okay, Lacus! Kira doesn't understand what he's leaving behind. He needs to stop blaming himself! It wasn't his fault! Wasn't he the one who told us to live on?" He felt his own tears welling up, but he suppressed them.

"The one who spouted all that crap about how it is our duty to live our life to the fullest, in memory of those who died in the war… Wasn't that Kira? And yet," his voice cracked.

"And yet, he left you. You, who could have given him happiness. Only idiots do things like that." He looked away from Lacus, pulling his sleeve away from her grasp.

"Athrun, don't you understand? That's why. The reason he left was exactly because I couldn't give him happiness!" she screamed.

"Then, who? Huh? Does he think that _woman_ can give him happiness?" he challenged her, unwilling to back down.

"It doesn't matter who. I don't care who. The point is that neither of us can give what the other wants. I wanted him to..." she was looking for the words that were so easy to say before. They escaped her now, butterflies that had flown off to die.

"I wanted him to love me. That's all. But he's already fallen in love with someone else. He loves that person dearly - even now. Who am I to force him to love me?"

"But, she's gone," Athrun said. At this point, he would even dare to say the cold, hard truth. That that woman was dead. _She was long dead._

"You know this too, Athrun. When people die, you don't stop loving them. Even if it hurts to think about them, and to realize every single time that they will never come back... You keep on loving. That's why Kira should…" she spoke resolutely.

"But we have to at least try," Athrun cut her off, agony in his voice. He knew this argument was going nowhere, but if there was hope that this could be fixed, he would grab at it no matter how small it was. He doesn't want to add another regret to his already long list.

"Athrun, you don't have to do anything. Sometimes, you just have to understand," she said, as she pulled him towards her side. They sat together in the darkness.

"You cannot force a tired heart."

* * *

a/n: [eien] if there was one thing i learned in our cardiology module, it was -yep- this. and for what happens after this, i'll leave it to your imagination.


End file.
